Anthropic CEO urges AI firms to slow down AI model development

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has called on AI companies to slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities, outlining a three-step framework designed to buy more time to manage the technology's risks.

In an essay shared on X on Saturday, Amodei wrote: "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."

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His plan calls for embedded independent evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices, coordination among frontier AI firms to set standards and limit unchecked development, and international cooperation on AI risks.

Both Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on X that they agreed with Amodei. "Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same," Altman posted.

The essay followed an Anthropic threat intelligence report on Thursday detailing how several actors had used its Claude models for weapons development, cyber operations, surveillance, and fraud.

Amodei pointed to AI's growing ability to improve itself, long-standing concerns about it outpacing human control, and the recent OpenAI and Hugging Face incident as reasons to apply the brakes. He wrote that in six to twelve months, a swarm of rogue agents could potentially take over the entire internet and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

He stressed he was not calling for a halt to training or technical progress, but for adequate time to align and safeguard models, with third-party evaluators confirming the steps.

Anthropic said it would install permanent third-party reviewers inside frontier AI companies, with access to tools and internal risk assessment. Amodei said coordination would let US firms carry out safety research without a competitive disadvantage, and might require targeted antitrust exemptions.

He argued any slowdown by democracies should be limited to preserving the US lead over China, calling tighter controls on advanced chips, model distillation, and theft of model weights necessary to stop the gap narrowing.